


Harvest Moon

by Penknife



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Dancing, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27014950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: The woods aren't safe, but they have their attractions.
Relationships: Bard the Bowman/Thranduil
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Harvest Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/gifts).



Bard rarely visits the Woodland Realm unannounced. Thranduil likes to entertain him, ensuring there is a feast for his arrival, and that Thranduil himself is free to provide more private entertainment later in the evening. This time, however, he has come himself with the latest shipment of wine, because he promised Dain that he would say something to Thranduil about disruptive activities near the Mountain, and he doesn't trust anyone else to deliver that message without being thrown in a cell for their pains.

It would be a gesture only. Thranduil would release his messenger in the morning with stern words, and the messenger would slink back and protest to Bard that he did nothing to deserve such treatment, and Bard would lodge a formal protest, and Thranduil would eventually almost but not quite apologize, but the entire exercise can probably be avoided.

In an attempt to avoid it, Bard sees that the barrels of wine are being properly unloaded, and then makes his way up twisting stairs he is beginning to know well enough to navigate, looking for Thranduil.

He finds him upstairs and outdoors, watching as magnificently dressed elves make their way into the woods in ones and twos, followed by less magnificently dressed elves carrying wine and platters of food and draperies to spread on the grass. It provides an opening, at least.

"Planning to annoy the neighbors again?" Bard asks.

Thranduil turns, looking unsurprised. Probably someone has told him that Bard is here. Possibly he's simply pretending not to be surprised because he feels it's undignified to be surprised. "Not tonight," he says.

"I promised Dain I'd mention to you that he dislikes having elven revels outside his back door. Not to mention having his wood-gatherers wind up muddled and confused miles from where they began."

"The dwarves have my leave to gather wood under the eaves of the forest, if they cut no living trees," Thranduil says. "I never promised that the forest would be safe."

"The hazard is, though, let's be frank, you."

"I have been nowhere near the Mountain," Thranduil says. "If some of our revels stray into territory Dain considers his own, I'm certain it's an accident on the part of some young and thoughtless folk of the wood."

Bard is, in fact, certain that it is a deliberate nuisance encouraged by the King of the Woodland Realm, and that if he truly disapproved of the activities of the wood elves who have been having such wild parties so close to the Mountain, they would stop. He is tempted to say, "Would you kindly knock it off?"

He resists the temptation, because this isn't his place to make demands. He and Thranduil have been lovers for years, but this is not a marriage or an alliance. He knows that he has no right to say "Do what I ask you to, because I share your bed."

He might, if he felt strongly enough, say "Please do what I ask you to, because I am your friend." But this isn't worth spending that credit. Thranduil will annoy Dain, Dain will bluster and complain, and relations between the two men will continue to be as stormy as ever, but there's been no real harm done.

He doesn't even ask, "What has Dain done to provoke you this time?" because whatever the answer is, it won't solve anything. Dain thinks Thranduil is absurdly foppish and fastidious, and makes his opinion known at every turn. Thranduil rarely fails to rise to the bait. Sometimes Bard wonders if he can hear some hint of Thranduil's long-distant youth in his touchy pride, his determination to command on his terms, and suit himself to no one else's expectations.

Instead, he says, "So where are you going, if not to annoy Dain?"

"A harvest moon is rising," Thranduil says. "The greenwood will be as bright as daylight tonight, and it is a fine night for dancing."

Bard has seen Thranduil's people dance, in caverns lit by crystalline lamplight, a swirl of skirts and silken hair, shadows leaping high on the walls. But he has not seen their true revels under the trees in the darkness. There are places where mortal men do not dare to go, even if they are elf-friends, if they know what is good for them.

"For elves, I imagine," Bard says.

Thranduil holds out a hand, a graceful and apparently careless invitation. "Will you come?"

He ought to say no. The two of them try to be discreet in their relations, at least in their relations beyond friendship, to avoid the appearance that the King of Dale is a pawn of the Elvenking. Also, there are spiders the size of ponies in those woods. This isn't at all safe, for any number of reasons.

"I would hate to miss it," he says.

He's still shaking his head at himself some time later, as he settles himself on silken cushions at the Elvenking's side, both of them reclining to watch the festivities. Through the trees the music of half a dozen flutes and harps rises and falls and twines around itself like the careless sounds of wind and water. There are lanterns, here and there among the trees, and the moon is indeed bright. The shadows between the trees are very deep.

Someone adds a drum to the sound of flutes, an insistent heartbeat. It's little like the bright dance tunes of Laketown and Dale, brassy with horns and jangling chords played on the lute. The heartbeat deepens and quickens. The flutes rise and fall like laughter, and then sharpen to an insistent melody. There are dancers now, moving between the trees, ringing and circling them, weaving between them in ever-changing patterns.

It's the kind of thing Bard's heard a little of, in traveler's tales: unwary mortals stumbling on elven merrymaking, getting only a glimpse of wild festivities before the music died to silence, the lights to darkness, and they woke cold and confused, to wonder if they'd dreamed the whole thing. This might be a dream, especially when Thranduil's hand drifts to rest on Bard's wrist, his fingers warm where Bard's pulse beats.

He wants, acutely and urgently, to take Thranduil by the front of his silken robes and bear him down, to get his hands under all that satin and tangle them in all that flowing hair. Instead he curls his fingers enough to brush Thranduil's own, and shivers at the rush of desire the slightest of touches brings.

"Dance with us," one of the revelers calls to Thranduil, and others take up the laughing call. "Come and show us how it's done!"

Thranduil's people love him, Bard knows. Bard has friends and family and loyal soldiers, and he considers himself well-liked, but the Woodland Realm is different from the kingdom of Dale. Thranduil has known most of these people from their birth, save for a few who are his age-mates, or his father's. They complain about him and adore him, and from his satisfied fox's smile, Bard knows Thranduil basks in their attention.

"If you insist," Thranduil says, rising gracefully. Some part of Bard hates to watch him go, slipping away from Bard's side to join a dance that Bard knows he'll never entirely understand. Thranduil turns back to him, with that same fox's smile. "Surely even in Dale they know how to dance."

"Not like this," Bard says, but he can no more resist than he could grow wings and fly. He stands, with far less grace, and lets Thranduil take his hand and draw him into the measures.

It's less like dancing than like being tossed from hand to hand, always feeling that he's about to stumble, but never quite falling. Warm hands are in his, the drum beat echoing through the soles of his feet, and more than once someone's arm wraps around him when he might stumble, and he can feel the warmth of an elven body through silken robes. The pace is relentless, the moon low now beneath the trees, and only the lanterns make it possible for him to keep his footing at all.

There's sweat streaming down his back, and still the drumbeat urges, faster, faster. He can't keep up the pace, he thinks, and just as he's about to break away, and wondering if anyone will allow it, he finds himself facing Thranduil again.

Thranduil catches both of Bard's hands in his own, and they turn in a spin that's almost sedate, though the sound of the flutes is still rising. Thranduil's grip is solid, anchoring. Bard feels tolerably steady on his feet again. Around him, there are fewer figures still treading the measures of the dance, and more entwined in one another's arms, and it occurs to Bard for the first time to wonder how this dance is meant to end—

The flutes rise to a scream, the drums to a thunder, and then, all at once, there is a flash of light like a thunderclap, and darkness falls. Thranduil pulls Bard into a fervent embrace, his mouth hot on Bard's own, his clever hands tugging at Bard's clothes.

Bard feels he probably ought to say no. He has no desire to say anything but yes.

Eventually, entirely worn out from their exertions, Bard recovers enough interest in his surroundings to realize that someone has draped a curtained awning over them like a tent, and that they have something like privacy within it. He's uncertain how far things went while still in plain view of anyone watching--fairly far, he's afraid--but Thranduil seems unconcerned. 

Bard props himself up, a bit, against the pillows, and Thranduil shifts to sprawl with his head in Bard's lap. Bard combs through Thranduil's silver hair with his fingers, treasuring the moment, and the trust in him that it reflects.

"You're a menace," he says, entirely fondly.

"I never promised that the forest would be safe," Thranduil says, and closes his eyes, leaning his head back even more trustingly into Bard's touch.


End file.
